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One healthy twin, the other with severe brain damage. The mother and the doctors decide to kill the sick child in the womb after the cesarean section. BGH confirms: This was not a legal late-term abortion, but a homicide.
By Bernd Wolf, ARD Legal Editor
It remains with the conviction for community homicide. Suspended sentences will likely be reduced to one and a half and three-quarters. The chief physician in charge and the now retired chief physician of a Berlin obstetric clinic carried out a twin birth in 2010.
It was already clear in advance: one fetus was healthy, the other severely brain damaged. First they gave birth to the healthy girl by cesarean section, then they killed the sick girl with a solution of potassium chloride. Everything corresponded to the will of the then 27-year-old mother.
The abortion would have gone unpunished
The main physician and the chief physician knew they were breaking the law. The murder of the viable but seriously damaged twin was a crime. Termination of pregnancy would have been exempt from sanction because there was a corresponding indication.
But, according to the decision of the fifth criminal division of the Federal Court of Justice in Leipzig, the rules on termination of pregnancy only apply until the beginning of labor, in the case of a caesarean section, until the opening of the uterus. According to this, doctors can no longer perform a legal abortion after a cesarean section. The prosecution only learned of the crime, which occurred in 2010, years later through an anonymous complaint.
File number 5 StR 256/20
